“The road to power is paved with hypocrisy, and casualties.” –Frank Underwood.
For you guys who watch the
Netflix series called “House of Cards”, you must be familiar with the Character
named Frank Underwood. A character played by Kevin Spacey is one of the main
characters in the series that has been airing since 2013. Frank Underwood is
portrayed as a very ambitious and cold-blooded politician who would do anything
to reach his political goals. Very often (if not every single time) he does
things that are considered morally inappropriate.
In the effort of completing his
ambitions, Frank is apparently not a one man show type of guy. Along with his
wife, Claire Underwood, Frank is a lot helped (although it doesn’t work every time).
Moreover, the presence of Frank’s right-hand character, Doug Stamper, makes it seems
to be nothing impossible for Frank to get what he wants in his political
career.
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| From left to right: Frank, Claire, and Doug Source: google image |
As a fan of the show, “House of
Cards” has obviously become one of the references for me in seeing the reality
of politics in the real world these days. Although once I had a discussion with
a friend of mine about it, he told me not to entirely believe in the situation
portrayed by the show because “…it’s just
a show after all.”
I was quite sure that he was only
looking for a validation that nothing that cruel actually happens in the real
world politics. I thought he also knew that he was ignoring the reality at the
moment he said that.
On the contrary, I keep on
believing that Frank Underwood and all his acts pretty much represent the
politics in real world. But before you call me as a fine product of western
propaganda, I am going to stop you right there. What I intend to imply by saying so is that
the stories presented by the show are, somehow, fit to how the politics itself
is being commonly defined and described. Politics is always about power. Or so
realists would say.
In political realism, politics is
often described as a cold and hostile form of human interaction within a
certain system. In the other words, political realism sees that the world is an
anarchic place. That practically means that every individuals have to struggle
in looking for the power and position in order to “survive” as long as there is
no higher authority that governs all of them. More on that, Robert Jackson and
Georg Sorensen described that realists are those who always feel anxious with
their position while in the competition with the others. They generally are the
people who always want to be in control and never want to lose the benefit of
being in power.
Hans J. Morgenthau, one of the
eminent international relations scholars, similarly described politics as the
same thing to which he described it as “struggle for power.” What he meant by
that was simply to say that power is a universally valid definition for the
concept of interest that is commonly articulated in the context of politics,
although it might endow the same meaning all the time. That being said,
political realism, in Morgenthau’s words, is also aware of moral existence in exercising
political actions by recognizing that there is an inevitable relations between
moral the existing moral values and the political action. However, instead of
completely denying that relations, it tends to bias it by creating a
justification that moral principle cannot always be applied along with the
political action. In order to do that, there has to be some sort of rigid selection
that involves the contextual consideration of time and place. Those are how
political realism works in a nutshell.
On those basis, Frank is a
physical specimen. His journey from the very first beginning of the show –up to
the latest– has always been covered by a warm layer of excessive ambitions for
power. From his first appearance as a congressman until the recent episodes
where he already became the president, he has never been in distant with some
“dark” political strategies. A bit of spoiler for those who are not yet
watching this show, in the first season, Frank involved himself in an affair
with a journalist named Zoe Barnes as he wanted to deploy his revenge strategy
after he was turned down from the previously-promised position as the Secretary
of the State. Frank fed Zoe with the scandal of the subsequent nominee Michael
Kern about the anti-Israel issue. In that scheme, both Frank and Zoe are mutually
benefited. Frank succeed running his strategy and Zoe earned a higher profile
as a journalist. To cover up the secret between both of them after the plan has
succeed, Frank eventually killed Zoe by pushing her up into the rail track as
the subway came approaching and finally ran over Zoe’s body. Poor Zoe, I know.
But this is Frank Underwood, everybody!
That is just one example of how Frank
Underwood turns on the dynamics of the show, in which in my opinion it contains
some significance to the way politics is being theoretically explained. Further
scrutinized, I also observe that Frank, apparently, does not only reflect the politics
based on its theoretical context. But, based on the existing empirical evidences,
he also reflects the real situation of how modern politics is actually run by
the politicians.
For a very specific example, as
we might see quite recently, there is a similar scheme happening in the case of
Jakarta gubernatorial election 2017. Regardless who is actually right in that
particular case, we can see that the competition to power in politics can take
advantage of almost anything including racial and religious issue. Of course,
using those two issues to discriminate others in any circumstances cannot be morally
and legally justified. Speaking on legal basis, in Indonesia it has been
regulated by the Law No. 40/2018 regarding the elimination of race and ethnic
discrimination. However, apparently now we can see that politics can make it
looks like it is legitimate to use those kinds of issue.
The other example is the case of
Donald Trump. We may have wondered why he can be eventually elected as the 45th
President of the United States after the controversial campaign that took the
world’s attention. Looking from the perspective of Trump as an allegedly-racist
figure, we think that it is almost impossible for him to gain the support from
the American constituents. But the fact that he won the election shows us that
there are still numbers of American constituents who think the same way as
Trump. That consideration, in my opinion, makes Trump’s controversial campaign
can be justified in order to win the U.S. presidential election.
With that being said, would we
still believe that Frank is nothing more than just a character of a show?
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